


Small Comfort

by Roselightfairy



Category: The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Enemies to Friends, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Memories of Battle, Sleep Deprivation, elf sleep, kind of, missing moment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-17
Updated: 2020-05-17
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:22:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24235735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Roselightfairy/pseuds/Roselightfairy
Summary: Legolas has not slept in over a month; has not even so much as dreamed in days. The horrors of their travel through Moria feel like a hallucination – or a nightmare – and now that they have arrived in Lothlórien, he knows there is nothing else for it but to slip away to rest.Grief-stricken by the loss of his kin and the ruin of Khazad-dûm, Gimli too excuses himself from the Fellowship as soon as he can manage, seeking solitude.  But when he stumbles upon one of his companions fast asleep in the forest, he cannot justify leaving him without a guard.
Relationships: Gimli (Son of Glóin) & Legolas Greenleaf
Comments: 24
Kudos: 146





	Small Comfort

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DeHeerKonijn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeHeerKonijn/gifts).



> In honor of fandom flow. <3

Legolas had never been awake for so long in his life.

He had gone a fortnight without sleep, maybe, a few times before – on longer scouting missions or patrols deep into the south of Mirkwood, when he was expected to be constantly on the alert. But even then, he had at least managed a few hours of reverie every few days, under the watchful eyes of his companions, and had fallen exhausted into his own bed at the end of each mission to sleep for at least a full night, often longer.

Now . . .

He had not slept in truth since a few nights before their departure from Rivendell, and had not managed to settle even into dream since before their doomed entry into the pits of Moria. The very air in that place made him shiver with revulsion, the weight of the stone pressing cold sweat from pores he had not known he had; his skin prickling all over with the awareness of _something_ – something ancient and terrifying waiting for him down in the depths.

Had it really been a Balrog? His memories of that time were only hot and cold flashes of sensation: a line of fire branded on the backs of his eyelids, an icy streak of pain across his shoulder, an agonized cry, the smell of singed metal, a muscle-knotted forearm beneath his fingers. And then the journey from there to here, a grief-tinged daze, a blur of time – a day or a week? And now, here in Lothlórien – the slow, lulling song of the trees, the swaddling enclosure of the silver leaves . . . The feeling of safety, for the first time in longer than Legolas cared to remember.

He would be no use to his companions if he did not rest. The Lady had as good as said so herself when she held his gaze, the touch of her mind piercing the veil of his clouded thoughts as nothing else could – and he would take her gentle reproof as permission.

And so, as soon as the Fellowship had been shown to the flets where they would make their beds, Legolas slipped away.

He made some halfhearted excuse about seeking the other elves, but in truth he meant to do nothing of the sort. These elves were his kin distantly, if at all, and such ties imparted no real knowledge. He trusted them, to do right by his companions, if nothing else – but with the intimacy of watching him sleep, standing guard over his rest?

No. For that he would need solitude.

He strayed from the path through the forest, using his last strains of cogent thought to follow a path of roots, leaves, and snatches of song to a thicket of tall grass nestled between two tall trees. Here, it seemed, few elves passed by, and surely his companions would not know how to seek him. Legolas dropped to the ground in the grass and curled up as tightly as he could – the habit of presenting a small target was not easily broken, even in a protected realm.

He was asleep as soon as he hit the ground.

* * *

Gimli made his excuses to the rest of the Fellowship as soon as caution and manners would countenance it.

They made thin pleas for him to stay – Boromir even offered to accompany him, if he wished for a companion. But he declined them all, and they let him go with little protest, all giving him understanding nods or squeezes of the shoulder as he strode away. He had been too long with the rest of them, too long under the shadow of fear or shock or indignation, had not yet had any quiet moment to sit with his own grief.

His own grief, and the grief of all his people.

_Khazad-dûm . . ._

The Book of Mazarbul lay still in his pack; he would open it later and read it through, when he had recovered from his shock enough to give true honor to his people’s words. For now, he let the images wash through his mind: the tombs, the bones, the fire that had claimed his people’s lives and their dreams. Balin, Ori, Óin . . .

Óin. His uncle.

Gimli did not know how he would break the news to his father. Glóin had never been as practical as many of their kind; he had spoken grimly of the likely fate of those who had ventured away the more time passed without word from Khazad-dûm – but Gimli knew his father had never given up hope for their prosperity there, or at least their safe return. _The Watcher in the Water took Óin . . ._ How to tell his father of his own brother’s grisly and undignified fate?

The forest melted into a silver-and-gold blur before Gimli’s eyes; he stumbled on, off the path, with little mind to where he was going – until he tripped over something soft and nearly tumbled to the ground.

“Oh!” he grunted, skipping back a step and leaning back to regain his balance before he could spill onto hands and knees. He blinked his eyes clear, shaken for a moment from the daze of his grief, to look down at what he had tripped over.

It was a body.

Gimli let out a startled squawk, stumbling backwards another step at the shock of it. Not only the shock of stumbling over a body in the midst of an elven realm he had been assured was safe – but also because it was a body he recognized. One of his companions, in fact.

Legolas had left their small circle of flets not long before Gimli had, claiming he meant to seek out his kin – so how was it that Gimli had now come upon him utterly motionless, curled on his side in the grass? Gimli would have thought him asleep – except he had not even stirred at the impact of Gimli’s foot, and his eyes were closed.

Gimli had pulled Gandalf aside one of the early days on the road and asked him, as quietly as possible, why it was that Legolas never slept – that even on Gimli’s own turns at watch, he still found Legolas watching him with open eyes. Gandalf had explained – and ah, but the thought of him sent another pang through Gimli’s breast, even despite the situation – that that open-eyed repose was what passed for sleep among elves, that it was their way of blending dream with the waking world. “He is not watching you any more than he is watching the rest of us,” Gandalf had promised him. “Whatever paths he follows in his dreams will layer memory over the waking world. Indeed, we have reason to be grateful that he rests in this way – it will make him quick to rouse at the slightest threat. Elves are light sleepers, and those of Mirkwood lighter than most.”

 _Quick to rouse_. Gimli stared down at Legolas now and gave him another experimental prod with his foot.

Legolas did not move.

Gimli’s stomach leapt up into his chest. This could not be right. And yes – he had been aggrieved with Legolas only moments ago, but he did not think the elf deserved to die! To lose another companion – so soon after the last – so soon after his own kin –

Gimli looked around frantically. He had wandered off the path, and had lost his bearings entirely. Even if he did manage to find his way to help, would he be able to lead anyone else back to this spot again?

There was nothing for it. He took a deep breath and shouted for help.

Legolas still did not stir, but evidently the keenness of elven hearing was not limited to Legolas’s own demonstrations on the road, for within moments two unfamiliar elves were dropping out of a nearby tree. Gimli did not recognize them from his arrival, which was somehow a relief and a disappointment at the same time – he had not yet been insulted by these elves, but he also had no familiarity with them.

“Master Dwarf?” said the first, in Westron with a lilting accent. “What ails you? Have you spotted danger?”

Gimli gestured down at Legolas. “My companion,” he said. “He is not – He is not well.”

The second elf moved across the ground like a squirrel – not quite running, not quite skipping, a strange dance-step – and sank smoothly into a crouch beside Legolas. “He is sleeping,” he said. “Is this why you called us here?”

“Sleeping?” Gimli looked down at Legolas again, doubt wrestling with the panic in his belly. “But he is not – his eyes are closed. And he did not stir when I attempted to rouse him.”

“If it will ease your mind, you may check his pulse and see for yourself.” The elf lifted Legolas’s limp wrist. “Do they not teach such skills to those who live beneath stone? You will feel it on the inside of the wrist.”

Gimli felt a flush begin to creep over his cheeks, and hoped his beard concealed the worst of it. “I know how to check a pulse,” he said gruffly, but stooped to take Legolas’s wrist nonetheless. Sure enough, the pulse beat steadily beneath his skin. “But I had been led to believe that elves slept only with eyes open . . .” His voice trailed off.

“We dream with eyes open,” said the first elf, as the second rose and stepped back to rejoin him. “When we truly sleep, it can be difficult to rouse us. He will be thus until he wakes on his own. We can send someone to watch him, if it truly concerns you. But he” –

“Never mind,” snapped Gimli. It seemed the courtesy of the Lady was unique to this place – or to all elvenkind. “I beg your pardon for disturbing you.” He itched to say something less courteous, but managed to stay himself. He was too tired for a bout with words, anyway. “You may return to whatever you were attending to before I so inconsiderately summoned you here.”

When they had gone, Gimli stood gazing down at Legolas’s limp form in the grass. It was still difficult to believe that he only slept – but he had to trust that these elves, for all their discourtesy, would not lie to him about the well-being of his companion.

But all the same, the thought of one of them coming upon him in such a vulnerable state alone made Gimli balk at the thought of leaving him. And how would he find him again if he did so?

There was nothing for it. This spot would do as well as any for the silence he had sought, and a sleeping companion would not interfere too greatly with his desire for solitude.

With a slight grunt, Gimli lowered himself down at the base of a tree and settled in to keep watch.

* * *

Legolas did not stir for many hours.

Gimli lost track of time as he sat there. It must have been a few hours into his vigil – at least the sun was setting – when he nodded off himself, against the tree. He woke again sometime into the night, but could find only the energy to resituate himself more comfortably on the ground before drifting off once more – and still, Legolas made no motion.

Gimli woke again in the morning, feeling oddly refreshed. Perhaps there was something to the stories of the magic of this place – for all the discomfort of his position on the ground, Gimli did not think he had slept so soundly since Rivendell.

Once he had blinked into wakefulness and reoriented himself to his surroundings, he swiveled to look at his companion – and found that Legolas remained still in the same position he had lain in the night before.

Still, unease nagged at him – but for all he might dislike the inhabitants of this place, he could not deny that he felt the same sense of loosening and ease here that others of the Fellowship had professed. Perhaps it was so strong because it stood in such stark contrast to the darkened halls of Khazad-dûm – for all the pain of that admission – but it was enough that he did not believe these elves would lie to him about the safety of his companion. Whatever their other shortcomings, they had been telling him the truth about that.

Well. Since he had no notion of when Legolas might wake, he might as well make himself comfortable.

* * *

Consciousness filtered back in slowly. Unlike the easy transition from reverie to the waking world, for a moment Legolas knew only himself, with no sense of the world around him. The first thing he felt was the languid heaviness in his limbs that reminded him he had been asleep. Then there was the ground beneath his side, the velvet darkness of the backs of his eyelids – and then, finally, the song of the forest around him –

 _The wrong song_. Full, disoriented consciousness crashed down on him and he surged upwards with a heaving gasp, his eyes flying open but his vision obscured by a black wave of dizziness. He blinked rapidly, waiting for it to clear, his head darting from side to side as he tried to remember where he was – why he was here –

From his left there was a startled yelp and the sound of scrabbling in the grass – someone else was here. Legolas’s hand shot out, instincts waking before the rest of him, and seized upon a mail-clad, muscular shoulder.

There was something about the feel of it in his grip that was familiar to his body, the solid realness of it beneath his palm waking the ghost of a sense memory: _he knew this person_. And finally the spots cleared from his vision and he found himself blinking into the wide-eyed and horrified face of a dwarf.

For a moment they both stared at one another, tense and wild-eyed, and slowly memory settled back into Legolas’s mind. This was Gimli, one of his eight companions. They were on a quest, and the forest around them was the Golden Wood of Lothlórien . . .

Legolas took a deep, slow breath. “Gimli.”

Gimli still stared at him, eyes wide and fixed in the same expression of shock. Legolas realized he was still holding Gimli’s shoulder, and with another long breath, forced himself to release it, bringing it up to his face instead to rub at his eyes. “I am sorry if I startled you.”

Gimli too took a deep breath. “You might say that,” he said gruffly. “Are you – all right? The elves here said you were merely sleeping, but I have never seen you sleep thus before.”

Legolas scrubbed with a finger at the crust around his eyes, which only accumulated after true sleep. “I try not to sleep on the road – but I have never been so long without a place of safety or at least companions I have known all my life to guard me.”

“Why did you not find your kin here, then, as you claimed?” Gimli asked. “It might have saved me the shock of stumbling over your body and thinking you dead.”

Legolas winced. “The elves here are not my kin, not truly,” he confessed. “I trust them, but that did not mean I wished them to see me in such a state. But” – And why was this true? He and Gimli had never been close, and if his memories were to be trusted the dwarf had every reason for anger at him, and yet he could not deny it. “But I feel better knowing that you were here. Thank you.”

Gimli looked, if possible, even more startled than before – but he composed himself after a moment. “That is . . . good, I suppose.”

“Are” – Legolas hesitated. “Is the rest of the Fellowship all right?”

“Well enough,” said Gimli. “Or – as well as can be expected, after everything.” He looked down, and a heavy silence fell between them.

Legolas swallowed. “Gimli.” It cost him to confess it, but he needed to know, and when would he next be able to find one of his companions alone? Not only that, which companion could he dare to admit this to? “I have not so much as dreamed since before Caradhras; I have never been so long without sleep, and my memory is” – A blur rushed through his mind, color and sound and sensation and emotion – “not to be trusted. I hardly know what is real anymore. Will you – will you tell me if what I remember is true?”

Gimli looked up with a startled jerk of the head and took a breath as if to speak – but then let it out without a word. Looking surprised even at himself, he nodded.

And so Legolas began his halting, out-of-order recount of the days past – they were in Lothlórien; they had come here from Moria. Gimli nodded along as Legolas recounted what he remembered: their arrival here, even the blindfolds. Legolas cringed when Gimli confirmed that memory – he should not have been sent to negotiate for their passage, in his state, but Gimli only shrugged off his halting apology. Either the hospitality from the Lady had softened his grudge, or that indignity had faded in the face of the worse memories.

The worse memories. Legolas steeled himself and continued his attempt to piece together all that had transpired in the past days. He identified the moment his memory had begun to blur – when the gates had closed behind them and left them beneath the dark stone of Moria. Then – it seemed unreal, not only from the daze of Legolas’s own memory but also at the thought that he could have fallen thus – but the crackle of fire behind his eyelids and the searing agony in his spirit could not be denied – “And Gandalf? Do I remember rightly about Gandalf?”

Again, Gimli nodded.

Legolas’s breath caught in half a dry sob somewhere high in his chest. “I did not want to believe it,” he whispered. “I had prayed my memory deceived me there, but it felt too real to deny.”

“And so it was,” said Gimli gruffly. “Much as we all might wish to deny the truth.”

“A Balrog,” Legolas whispered. “I had heard the legends, but never thought to see one myself. I wish I had not.” He swallowed, remembering anew the prickle all over his skin, the feeling of eyes on the back of his neck, the jittering urge in his stomach and chest to movemove _move_. “I knew something evil lurked there, but I did not know – _that._ ” He shuddered.

Gimli said nothing – only bowed his head.

But at the sight of that, another memory presented itself to Legolas, something he had almost failed to notice at the time, so preoccupied by the near-panic pressing on his lungs. The sight of Gimli’s head lowered in respect and sorrow – even before Gandalf’s fall. And he remembered the feeling of Gimli’s arm beneath his hand, remembered the familiarity of it –

“Your kin, Gimli,” he said softly, overwhelmed anew by guilt and grief. “Do I remember rightly that you lost kin in Mor” – no, Gimli had not called it that, had he? – “in the mine?”

“Khazad-dûm,” said Gimli hoarsely. “Though _Moria_ is an apt name, now, I suppose – nothing but death and ruin lingers in that place.” He looked up at Legolas at last, his eyes bright. “And yes, I did.”

Without thinking, Legolas reached forward and seized Gimli’s wrist – just the place he had touched before, when pulling Gimli’s resisting figure away from the tomb of his fallen kinsman. They both started at the moment of contact; surely the same memory of despair and darkness and panic had risen up between them – but there was more to it as well: companionship, support. Care, for all it must surprise them both to find it for one another. “I am sorry, Gimli,” he said, and he hoped that his sincerity would shine through in his voice and eyes. “Truly, I am so sorry.”

Gimli blinked rapidly, and to Legolas’s shock a tear slid from the corner of his eye and trickled into his beard. “Thank you,” he said, and his voice wavered and cracked.

“I know it is small comfort,” Legolas said. “But if you ever wish to speak of them, or if there is anything else you might ask for – I am here.” His cheeks heated, but he did not break their gaze. “I will listen.”

Gimli took a shaky breath and let it out in a long, shuddering sigh. “Small comfort, perhaps,” he said softly, “but comfort nonetheless.”

He glanced down, and Legolas followed his gaze down to where he still held Gimli’s wrist, in a firm grasp that spoke of fellowship.

Neither of them moved away.


End file.
